he's the man who promised hope and change but when it comes to his record critics say his foreign policy is just more of the same we'll take a look back over the past four years and draw some interesting comparisons between president obama and predecessor. one journalist pick up their press badges they accept the risks that come with the job but one journalist in california is suing the l a u for the abuse he suffered while covering the occupy wall street protests his story ahead. in the construction of the keystone x.l. pipeline is experiencing get another road block this time coming from a texas judge we'll tell you the latest in this saga and show you who's stands to gain the most from it.

it's wednesday december twelfth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching r.t. we begin with the international uproar after north korea test launched a long range rocket and the greater foreign policy implications north korea says it's an experiment to put a satellite into space but the u.s. japan and south korea are among the nations of fear that this is a step toward the secretive country launching a long range nuclear weapon north korea of course is part of what's been infamously dubbed the axis of evil it was president george w. bush that first put the label on the group of countries during his state of the union speech in two thousand and two states like these and their terrorist allies. and actually should be. arming to threaten the peace of the world. by seeking

weapons of mass destruction these regimes pose a grange and growing danger a north korea iran and iraq make up this axis ambassador john bolton took it a step further and deemed three more nations as part of this axis he said quote beyond the axis of evil there are other rogue states intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction particularly biological weapons first libya there's no doubt that libya continues its longstanding pursuit of nuclear weapons the united states also knows that syria has long had a chemical warfare program as a stockpile of the nerve agent sarin and has been gauging research and development of the more toxic and persistent nerve agent the x. value goes on to add cuba to that list and that was back in the bush era era and here we are today weeks away from president obama's inauguration to a second term as president the nobel peace prize winner campaigned on and under the promise of hope and change and presented himself as the anti bush and iran policy

is a complete failure right now and that's the policy that john mccain is running on he has nothing to offer except the naive and irresponsible belief that tough talk from washington will somehow cause iran to give up its nuclear program and support for terrorism i'm running for president to change course not to continue george bush's course but despite the promise to put the country on a different track than his predecessor is he really much different we've heard the same fears echoed in the obama administration these past few weeks listen to secretary of defense leon panetta saying almost the exact same thing as former ambassador ball and when it comes to syria harboring weapons whole world's watching very closely. and the president i would say she's made very clear that there will be consequences. there will be consequences if the assad regime

makes a terrible mistake by using chemical weapons on their own people well as president bush that launched the war on terror but president obama kept it going and kicked it up a notch targeted killing state secrets the n.s.a. spying on citizens guantanamo bay all of this happened happening to a heightened degree under president obama drone seemed to be president obama's weapon of choice the use of them spiked under his administration obama has two hundred eighty three strikes in pakistan that is six times more than bush drone deaths under obama are four times higher than bush while this chart here puts it into perspective we see during the bush years strikes were minimal but then you see them skyrocket after obama was elected the peak being in two thousand and ten and while it's decreased since then it's still much higher this year than it ever was under bush so despite the promise to take a drastically different foreign policy approach instead it seems when obama's

foreign policy doesn't near or that of bush actually takes it a step further and the axis of evil remains just as much of a threat under president obama. we turn now to another case of police brutality we saw many violent examples of it during the occupy wall street movement when that when that movement was in full force but now a journalist is suing the los angeles police department reporter calvin mealamu of los angeles a city news service says police attacked him when he was trying to cover occupy wall street last year some of it was caught on camera. milam says officers with the l.a.p.d. tackled him to the ground put him in handcuffs and detained him for hours without charge he says this was all for this trying to do his job as a correspondent covering this protest and told us what he knew about the case well liz we got a hold of a copy of the lawsuit which has been filed here in los angeles court alleging that

the civil and constitutional rights of calvin milan who we saw in the video were violated now this all stems as you mentioned from the arrests last year during the raid of occupy l.a. now in the initial reporting the following the arrests the police department gave the press a story about the way that mr milan had been behaving in the reason why he was arrested but obviously the video showed that he clearly displayed his press badge to officers and that he was not as drunk and belligerent as they had initially claimed it couldn't tell us what was in charge or what exactly he is accused of as right well initially he was arrested in charge for unlawful assembly now eventually those charges were dropped and that's really a main argument of the defense year the say which is suing the city of los angeles

they say that there's no reason that he should have been arrested for unlawful assembly because an unlawful assembly had been declared according to defense i spoke to the attorney representing. the journalists today margaery goes in what he told me about the l.a.p.d. and their story is that they are lying through their teeth interest saying in ramallah i know that you were there so you kind of saw this all go down firsthand can you tell us i mean i know that he wasn't the only one how many people were arrested and my understanding is that he wasn't even the only journalist. no you're absolutely right liz now there are nearly three hundred people arrested during this rain most of these i mean virtually everyone was a peaceful protest while we were there we didn't observe anybody raising their hand or throwing anything police and as you mentioned besides the journalist who is suing the city of los angeles currently there were. other journalists who were arrested and including tyson heater who we talked to afterward i mean he was seen

with a black eye and bruises in the coming days after his treatment from police and we also spoke to him as a good investigative reporter yasha levine who was also arrested kept in jail for a couple of days and according to him he even got scabies from his time in jail following this raid and as you mention these are all peaceful protesters and journalists who were there doing their job wow. what is next for this reporter right well we talked to the attorney representing him and the journalist who is suing is very anxious to take the stand and give his side of the story now he says that the police the defense attorney mark geragos says that the police have distorted the facts we also talked to the l.a.p.d. this morning who said that there is nothing to say they say the cases in litigation and they are getting ready for to defend them themselves in court as well ok i do

want to take a moment ramona and talk more about the police stance because they have recently come out and said that. they confuse me along with another individual who was drunk at the scene but in addition to that they are kind of a defending themselves saying that. he ignored clear directions that were given to law and charge through the security line he talked more about what the police are saying. that's right well they've been playing damage control ever since that they claim that he was drunk and belligerent and then the video showed otherwise now they have said that he was not following police orders and that he rushed through the line but at the same time we can see in the video that he is. representing himself as a journalist showing his press badge which an l.a.p.d. press badge does allow you to cross police lines if it is safe to do so and beyond his right to be there i mean in the lawsuit clearly points out that he is

a practicing journalist and as a practicing journalist he has a first amendment right to be at the scene of a news story and to cover it so that's another one of those violations that's been alleged that which was violated by the l.a.p.d. i remind him last i want to ask you because i know you spent a lot of time cover not only the occupy wall street protests but also cases of police brutality over there analogous has something like this happened before. when it comes to large mass protests and reporters there absolutely has been a very poignant case back in two thousand and seven massive mayday rallies hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets police crackdown very heavily not just on the crowd but we're seeing hitting journalists with but tons eventually these cases resulted in more two million dollars payouts on behalf of the police department for protestors and for the journalist themselves who were injured and

the l.a.p.d. even said that they were going to change their practices when it comes to dealing with the press and dealing with large crowds but from what we see at the rate at occupy l.a. and now this lawsuit from the journos it seems that there still are many lessons to be learned thank you that was our correspondent among glenda. well it's no secret that obesity is a public health problem in the u.s. but beyond americans health could it be affecting national security it turns out obesity is the leading cause for making people in eligible to join the army take a look at the numbers between one thousand nine hundred eighty eight and two thousand and ten the number of active duty military personnel being overweight or obese more than tripled in two thousand and ten more than eighty six thousand troops or five point three percent of the force received at least one clinical diagnosis has overweight or obese and during the first ten months of this year the opposite the army taked out more than six hundred soldiers for being out of shape

that's about fifteen times higher than in two thousand and seven. well typically when you think of military guys you think of men in tiptop shape but could you be looking at the evolution of the american soldier for more and leisel jones waistlines are expanding u.s. naval seals smith joined us earlier today. well this is nothing new liz we've been doing this for. decades now dealing with a growing population and i'm fortunate lee the military is just a segment of society in today's society we are overweight so you're saying that this kind of just what we're seeing now in the military is a reflection of a problem we're seeing in the civilian population yes it is it's a national problem not necessarily a military problem the military has standards and for decades the military is here

to those standards and you know when you don't meet the standards not only are you overweight and not meeting height weight standards but they are also failing the fitness standards which really makes it dangerous for them to be doing these kind of jobs right. you know i know that you're a navy seal and i've heard about the really intense training that you do and isn't that just part of being in the military that you need to be in shape and they kind of drill you to make sure that you do stay in shape yes well i mean there are many jobs in the military especially in the special operations side where it is very physical so not only do you have a regular form of exercise your job is also expanding calories however there are many jobs in the military that are quite sedentary and you're sitting down at a computer just like anybody else ok so we see that on this problem in the civilian population is kind of stealing over into the military population but could it be

too that the military is now being more picky since it doesn't need as many people with the winding down of the wars. oh absolutely at the end of every war there is a drawdown and now everything has to be so height weight standards have the fitness standards have to be if you have any criminal or criminal issue like a dui or something like that i mean those things also have teeth now meaning that the military can easily release you if you're not adhering to those standards. ok we we put those figures are earlier on but those figures are just in the army do you think when you think about the navy and the air force another branch of the military experiencing the same problem. my experience is is all the military as well as law enforcement and fire fighting it is throughout all three

branches. you will see is just as many stories about police officers as well as firefighters have and the same issues. like that is nothing new it is our society that is. we're just seeing it spill over again nothing new but it does seem like it's definitely getting worse especially in the wake of these new new figures . you obviously obesity i mean it's been called an epidemic a national epidemic and obviously it's a huge problem it's a public health could it be that a problem to national security now that we're seeing it affect the military. absolutely i've been studying this since one thousand nine hundred ninety five i mean this is nothing new very i remember seeing incoming. troops come in there and more than fifty percent of you could not pass the physical fitness standards on day one so this is not the new the fact that the alarming volume of

people that are getting kicked out form of that is definitely a story. yeah i mean in the first ten months of this year the army kicked out over sixteen thousand soldiers so it's a problem not only getting in now as a civilian but already those that are already enlisted are. getting too much weight i guess. so so i want to ask you what is the mill you know how is this prompting this problem now that it's been identified as a problem in the military to reexamine its training programs i guess how do you get these soldiers back in shape well the military has actually spent a lot of money on hiring physiologists a lot more trainers so it's not just some drill sergeant that is getting people into shape it is actually. trainers that are helping out.

ok i do want to ask you because we are seeing the battlefield in this definition of the battlefield what that is and what that means kind of changing we saw especially under the obama administration the use of drones expanding so with war with warfare you know as you said a lot of these these soldiers they have jobs where they're sedentary and you know when you're operating a drone you're pretty much operating remote or remote control so couldn't that a job like that lead to the fattening of a soldier as well where you know but there's no excuse in it to be honest with you i mean you have if when you are. flagged for being out of business standard or out a height weight standards you know about it immediately you know of usually over a year to correct that issue the fact that people are getting kicked out for it you know they've had quite some time to get their stuff together and the fact that they

didn't get it done. you know you could say the military did make me work out but you know that's not really their job really interesting. obesity i guess affecting national security who would have thought thank you very much for coming on the show that was u.s. navy seal smith. and i do a story coming from texas where a judge halted construction of the keystone x.l. pipeline a texas land owner name michael bischof filed a lawsuit against trans canada that's the company building the pipeline from alberta canada downs of the gulf of mexico a pipeline would transport tar sands but bishop said that trans canada like to have another owner is when they said the pipeline would transport crude oil tar sands however solid bishop is also worried the pipeline will contaminate his land dexie county judge court judge signed

a two week injunction that will halt work on bishop's property it went into effect yesterday but on december nineteenth the injunction ends so what will happen to the pipeline that already has reported that trans canada isn't the only one with a stake in the pipeline susan rice the current ambassador to the u.n. and possibly the next secretary of state has between three hundred and six hundred thousand dollars worth of investments in trans canada but there's more the canadian company contributed over one hundred twelve thousand dollars and the u.s. two thousand and twelve election cycle and as you can see both barack obama and mitt romney were among the top recipients so if you follow the money is there a bleak future for michael bishop and others challenging the keystone x.l. pipeline was joined earlier by investigative journalist greg palast while this is a temporary injunction on the pipeline construction i asked him what happens next. well according to mayan calendar it will be permanent because the world went today

about midnight but that doesn't happen i expect that that's going to be a tough time. more it's going to be a tough time for the x.l. pipeline because the the complaint that something interesting is that looked this was the crude oil and it's not it it's glob it's pretty hard to call the tar sands oil it's really asphalt it's just that it's been melted it's if you took your street and melted down and as soon as it is it hits cooler air it becomes solid this is the junk in gunk and so i think that this is just the beginning for the x.l. pipeline but the real the real power here the real danger the real political force here are the koch brothers. who are not the owners of the pipeline and of the owners of the oil but they are the intended recipients of the oil this is very very important to their response i never use on the texas gulf coast the koch brothers

refineries run can only handle heavy crude oil which they get right now from hugo chavez and they don't want to get it from hugo chavez or venezuela because venezuela charges a very heavy price for heavy crude so this is all about the money and it's all about the koch brothers and that's the real story here and you know we did break down there susan rice among the public officials that have a stake over this pipeline so people like bishop really stand a chance when they're up against a lot of these people are big players in the public sector also apparently having a stake in a well sure i mean every major movement environmental action has always been against the big boys and the big oil companies and sometimes the people when the environment when you know mother nature has a fairly good track record import and so it's not

a lock deal here because it won't be just bishop once he wins is injunctions this could open the door to a whole bunch of other landowners saying hey wait a minute doesn't threaten the property my property by running this block through the pipelines not the usual texas tea that's coming through it's not crude it is kind of loot all it's really nasty gloppy stuff and if this pipe breaks they've got a big they'll have a really big problem so i don't think that that's a lock even after all whether it's susan rice or. hillary clinton and there is pretty much a feeling within the state department that we ought to let this through. you know the reason why one of the reasons cited for for bill. pipeline or a lot of talk about energy independence do you think that this pipeline will lead the united states to energy independence and the idea is crazy because remember

that of the oil is up on the gulf coast of texas as the valero and sunoco refineries own now owned by coke oil the koch brothers and that of oil will be read and the gasoline will be sent to the caribbean where that just a much higher price than in the us i mean the idea we're energy independent when asked to run a pipeline slash across the entire continental united states from canada to the gulf coast you would move that oil into the upper midwest where we do need crude oil for heating. this is not for the u.s. it's not make us energy independent it's all about making money for the koch brothers all right i mean i mean as we've seen this pipeline has proven to be very controversial and then this isn't the first legal battle that we've seen regarding the keystone pipeline a can you just kind of go over some of the other some of the other precedents or

what output today well we start out with the fact that it's international doesn't go north of the normal process of being reviewed by the environmental protection agency the but rather by the state department and the state department gave it a green light however. because the u.s. congress republicans said that it had to go you have to run this big nasty pipeline across the united states of america the entire continental united states because it goes right over the america's biggest waterson for. america's biggest soccer field because of that. the the obama strains that what we need environmental review which we do in any big project but the republican congress. in order to approve the pipeline obama would have to waive any environmental review well you know the guys running for reelection is not politically suicidal so he

said i will not approve it under those conditions that held it up republicans overreached and people want oil but we know that right now this is a. long term analysis is that without the canadian oil the u.s. already will be in surplus because in north dakota where we have a tremendous amount to shell oil well i'll ride certainly we can keep this conversation going unfortunately we are at a time mr pals appreciate you coming on that was investigative journalist greg palast and that it was a story we are always on top of and that is the revolving door between the public and the private sector we try to bring in the most egregious examples of people who go back and forth is going on working for the government and working with the government on the behalf of big business says when the when working on public policy they can blur the line between what is best for citizens and what is best for their high paying and ploy or as the latest to make the switch

a fellow by the name of bob ryan ryan was a top housing adviser for the obama administration until he announced that he was leaving to take a senior position at wells fargo. well that's the same wells fargo that was investigated and sued by the department of housing and urban development where ryan currently works wells fargo settled with hud for allegedly kicking people out of their homes without trying to offer them a reeve finance of their mortgage and doctor their paperwork clearly no hard feelings for a while as fargo which has grown its mortgage unit significantly since the economic crisis and now makes up nearly a third of the whole mortgage market that's according to inside mortgage finance. and before ryan was part of hide he spent twenty six years at freddie mac. the housing and the human if that was taken over by the government to prevent its collapse in two thousand and eight when ryan moved to the agency. well why it while

ryan takes his cushy new job at wells fargo taking his close government connections with him almost fourteen point nine million homeowners still owe more on their mortgage than their house is a worth. and from the revolving door in washington deplaned a money game here in d.c. it's been said that politicians long ago sold out the american people for campaign cash well this next story just proves that point they hell newspaper reports that nearly a dozen newly elected members of congress have already set up super pacs but keep in mind these ten people have not yet even been sworn into office that will happen next month but they already have super pacs in place to raise money. in the past super pacs have normally been used by senior members of congress to influence and build alliances many super pacs donate to other lawmakers campaigns or the campaigns of politicians back in their home state so what does this say about how

washington works but it does this just prove that money runs this town when lawmakers who haven't even been given keys to their offices already raising money for the next election seems like the answer is yes meanwhile this country is headed for a fiscal cliff it does make you wonder how compulsion to worry about the nation's finances when they're worrying about raising money for the next election that it was just something to think about. now before we go it is that time of the year again where we start to say goodbye to two thousand and twelve now google is out with their two thousand and twelve year and report that looks at some of the big events across the world these year and reports flashback news stories that gained worldwide attention and if you noticed at one point our team got a shout out so we just wanted to thank you for that plug. and we are going to leave it off there but for more of the stories we covered you can always head on over to our you tube channel we post everything there in fall that is you tube dot com

slash artsy america you know the check out our web site that's our dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at liz wahl for now have a great night.